


Sessions

by SomniumFlorum



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Romance, mild drug use
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-05
Updated: 2016-10-11
Packaged: 2018-08-19 17:37:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8219447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomniumFlorum/pseuds/SomniumFlorum
Summary: A bottle of rum, a pack of cigarettes, a shag carpet, and a whole afternoon. Talking about his feelings had never been his forte, but, somehow, she makes Danse feel at ease.





	1. Something to Believe In

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again!  
> This is a little compilation of short talking sessions between Paladin Danse and my S.S. As of this moment, I'm not sure how many chapters it will have (I already have a few in order), but I hope you'll keep checking back for more.  
> As always, please leave me any comments, questions, or criticisms. I appreciate you all!  
> (P.S.-- I'm still on the hunt for a proofreader. If anyone can help me out on that one, I might turn into a rocket and blast off into space from happiness)

“I didn’t always have these beliefs.”

 

The pair sits on a bloodstained shag carpet, a bottle of rum between them. All she can see in the setting light is the outline of his hand as he reaches for the bottle for the fifth time.

“I didn’t even want to join the Brotherhood. Not really.”

He reaches over to hand the bottle to her, and for the first time since they arrived, she is able to see his face. It’s merely a glimpse, but she can see his lips drawn into a firm line, his eyebrows furrowed.

Danse waits for her to take a drink and lights up a cigarette, drawing deep before offering it to her. She takes it knowing that this is probably the closest she’ll ever get to his heart-shaped lips.

“I miss the freedom sometimes.”

“Of not being in the military,” she offers in a cloud of smoke.

“Of thinking for myself.”

His hand extends towards hers, index finger making a curling motion that makes Penelope’s legs clench together. She’s not sure, but in the last bit of sunshine peeking in from the window, she thinks she can see the corner of his lip curl upward.

She hands him both the bottle and the cigarette with the same hand, the latter nuzzled carefully between two fingers, unlit side towards him. His hand makes a motion to grab the cigarette from her, but he instead reaches for the bottle, and slowly begins leaning towards her. Penelope draws in a silent breath just as his lips brush against her fingertips, pulling the cigarette ever so delicately from her.

“I think I needed something to believe in,” he mumbles with the cigarette still between his lips, smoke billowing out from the small gap between them. He removes the cigarette from his lips with his thumb and index finger, and he looks at it almost incredulously.

“I don’t how something so bad can feel so good.”

Penelope laughs dryly, scooting herself just a few inches closer to him. She likes to convince herself that it is only so she can see his expressions better in the dark.

Danse puts the cigarette out against the side of the bottle and leans his head back against the wall, looking at Penelope through heavy lids.

“I think I’m finding better things to believe in nowadays,” he confides.

The way he looks at her as the words come out of his lips makes a pool of warmth gather in Penelope’s chest, and she is suddenly too self-conscious for comfort.

“Why did you need something to believe in in the first place?”

His head hangs to one side and she can tell he’s looking straight at her even though she can’t see his eyes.

“Out here? Hell, I’m surprised if someone doesn’t. Why do you get up every day?”

“For Shaun,” she answers without hesitation.   


“I didn’t have that, a clear cause, a goal. I woke up every morning,” he balances himself on his toes for a moment before standing up, “unsure if it would be my last.”

He’s pacing the floor in front of her, so she leans back on her elbows to better look at him. The moonlight catches him at just the right time, and she can see that for once, his brown eyes have melted from onyx to rich chocolate.

“That little junk shack in Rivet City wasn’t where I was supposed to be. And maybe the Brotherhood wasn’t either, but it felt like the right thing to do at the time.”

Danse leans down towards her and offers her his hand, helping her hoist herself up. They stare at each other for a little longer than he knows they should, and for a brief moment he thinks of leaning in.

“It’s all a journey,” he decides, finally turning away.

“The Capital Wasteland, the Brotherhood, the Commonwealth. It was a journey leading me here.”

Penelope’s stomach is in knots and she wishes he would be direct, like he is when he’s  _ Paladin  _ Danse, but she knows that’s too much to ask of him right now.

“We should head back,” she whispers, fingers resting on his shoulder gingerly.

He turns back towards her and his face is harsh once again, the face of a military man. Of Paladin Danse.

"Let’s move out, Knight.”


	2. Not for Lack of Loving

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!  
> I'm diligently (and painfully) working on the last chapter of Deliverance, but for now I'm taking a small break to focus on Sessions a bit more. Thank you to everyone who read the first chapter, and I hope you like this one!

“I miss Nathaniel less and less each day.”

 

It’s not something she speaks about frequently, so Danse stays quiet. He feels her hand nudge against his shoulder and he grabs the joint from her, eyes never straying from their spot on the ceiling.

“It’s not for lack of loving,” she justifies, head lolling from side to side as she follows the rotation of the ceiling fan. “I think I’m just getting used to life without him.”

She can hear Danse inhale beside her but she doesn’t turn over to look. It was earlier than usual, and they both feel vulnerable enough as it is. There’s a brushing against her arm, and then his hand is on hers, squeezing gently.

“You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met.”

His hand vanishes and is replaced with the half-smoked joint.

“I still think about him, but it hurts less now. The memories are becoming foggier, though I can still remember his face.”

She takes a long drag and closes her eyes, holding it for a few seconds before filling the room in a smoky haze. Danse takes the opportunity to look over at her, watching her olive skin shimmer like gold in the sunlight pouring in from the windows.

“He came back from war with a scar on his left cheek that he was really self conscious about. I thought it was a sign of strength, of someone victorious.”

Danse instinctively reaches for his right brow, fingers feeling for the jagged indent in the skin.

“That’s what I liked about him; he was a warrior, like me. I liked to scrap and that didn’t scare him off. I would come home with bruised cheeks and swollen noses and he’d tell me how proud he was while I was bleeding all over our white carpet. He would patch me up good day at the gym or bad, every single time.”

Danse has wanted to watch her fight ever since he saw the picture of her in the old boxing gym, clad in candy apple red gear, hoisting a belt above her head. His heart had thumped rapidly against his chest, a feeling of exhilaration coursing through his blood at the sight of her face, swollen and bleeding in multiple places but with a wide, jubilant smile as tears ran down her cheeks. But he could never tell her that.

“I think I miss him more as my best friend now than as my husband,” she admits, reaching across the space between them and placing the joint between his fingers.

“I will never not be in love with him, but it’s more of a warmth than a burn.”

They’re both silent for a while, stretched out lazily on the bloodstained shag carpet they’d share the occasional afternoon on.

“Mutated fucking fern, huh,” Danse finally offers.

“Habitués tend to be… inventive. It was a matter of time before someone found a replacement for weed.”

As an afterthought, she adds, “I didn’t think you’d go for it.”

Danse turns his head to face her, and she mirrors the motion. Her eyes are a sunburst of honey and gold in the light, and he nearly forgets that she isn’t his.

“I don’t think I could say no to one of our afternoons.”

Her face flushes so ferociously that even her lips turn pink, and she suddenly feels bashful.

“Dinner should be out soon,” she remarks, turning her eyes towards the ceiling again. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Danse smiling at her, as if he knew some secret about her that she had never even told.

“Give me a minute, I want to enjoy this.”


	3. For Non-Blondes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone!  
> Sorry it's been taking me so long to post. Been pretty busy over the past few days. But here it is, finally! Deliverance is still in the works (I've rewritten it three times because I'm insane), so thank you for your patience.  
> Enjoy!

“My first crush ever was the Nuka-Cola girl.”

 

“Amen to that.”

Penelope raises her bottle of Nuka-Cola as a salute, and his meets it with a gentle  _ clink _ before Danse presses his lips against it, savoring each slow sip he takes.

“I always imagined that her kisses would taste like this.”

Penelope turns to face him and she can make out the curvature of his lips, of his pink tongue darting out to lick a droplet of cola from the corner of his mouth and her legs clench in longing for his hot breath between her thighs.

Her head turns back, and she’s searching for anything else to focus on, anything but his mouth, so she inquires, “What was it about her that you liked?”

Danse purses his lips for a second as he thinks, closing his eyes to imagine the lithe blonde with the cherry colored mouth before he speaks.

“Her legs went on for days,” he mentions first, leaning his head back against the wall as he pictures it.

“And she had this beautiful smile, white teeth and red lips. I’d never seen a girl look like that before, and I never thought that I actually would.”

There’s amazement in his voice, and he turns to find Penelope’s eyes on his. Danse can see that she knows what he means, that he means  _ her _ , that she is the Nuka Cola girl of his dreams come true but so much ethereal than he had ever imagined.

“It was exhilarating, for a thirteen year old kid,” he explains, suddenly overly conscious of himself.

“You really wanted her to zap your thirst, huh,” Penelope purrs, taking another sip from the bottle.

Danse’s response is a warm chuckle, little wrinkles forming around the corners of his eyes as he shakes his head in disbelief.

“You could say that, though nothing really happened for me until I was twenty-two.”

Penelope’s eyebrows shoot up immediately, her lip curling upward into a small grin as she cocks her head at him.

“Bullshit.”

This time his chuckle is deeper.

“I wasn’t always this handsome  _ or  _ charming.”

He’s looking down and patting at the front of his bomber jacket when the sunlight drowns him in splendor, and Penelope’s eyes sweep over him, over his dignified face, over his long, calloused fingers, over his disheveled brown hair and she wonders how anyone wouldn’t want him.

Danse procures a cigarette box from one of the inside pockets and looks up just as Penelope looks away, her lips firm in guiltless thoughtfulness.

“I’m serious. It wasn’t until after I joined the Brotherhood that women started showing interest in me,” he confesses sheepishly as he smacks the bottom of the box against his thigh.

“Alright, I’ll indulge you… How did it happen?”

Danse places a cigarette between his lips and lights it, letting a few puffs of smoke form before he begins.

“It was a few years after I joined the Brotherhood and we were stationed in Elizabeth, New Jersey.”

He takes a long drag and pinches the filter of the cigarette, extending his hand over to Penelope.

“Cutler was always a lot more fun that I was. One night we were in our quarters and he tells me that there’s a bar nearby where girls strip. I was hesitant at first, but he would  _ not _ stop talking about it until I agreed to go with him. It was a really flashy place-- tailored suits, top shelf liquor, girls in sequined dresses dancing burlesque on a stage… Hell, I’d never seen a naked woman before, so I panicked.”

He’s looking up at this point, head resting against the wooden wall and Penelope thinks that maybe he’s reminiscing for his friend too. Her fingers land gently on his chest and he takes the cigarette from between them without looking down.

“He bought me a couple of drinks to relax and after some time I started getting into it, so Cutler, being who he was, dared me to talk to the prettiest woman he could find. She was sitting at the other end of the bar, gorgeous with her cropped gold hair and piercing blue eyes—”

“Like the Nuka-Cola girl,” Penelope interjects with a small smile.

A hint of a blush appears on Danse’s face and he replies, “Yeah, like the Nuka-Cola girl. So I went to talk to her, even though I’d never been so nervous in my entire life. Her name was Lila, and she was a water filtration engineer from New York. She was surprisingly easy to talk to, smart, charming, and after a while she asked me to go back to her hotel room with her. I never expected to have sex with her; we were kissing on the bed and then she kind of… bluntly told me where she’d like for my mouth to be…”

He pauses for a moment, embarrassed but already far too deep to stop.

“Anyway, I saw her for a while, before the Brotherhood sent me north again. She, ah… taught me a lot.”

“You’ve got a thing for blondes.”

She says it plainly, but there’s a hint of something close to jealousy in her voice.

He takes a slow drag and looks over at Penelope sitting there beside him, her thick brown hair a halo around her. She turns to look back at him and for a moment he finds himself lost in her topaz eyes and her golden skin, and he knows that she’s the only woman he’ll ever want again.

“Not anymore.”


End file.
